Feb 14, 2012

Israel has dispatched a number of naval vessels—under cover—into the Arabian Sea, and they are moving into its northern regions, just off of Iran, a U.S. intelligence source has reported in Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

The Israeli vessels have been positioned at the mouth of the Gulf of Oman, which leads to the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has threatened to shut down that gateway to the Persian Gulf if further sanctions are imposed against its sale of oil and on its central bank.

Israel also has threatened a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities out of concern that it is using them to develop nuclear weapons. Indeed, Iran just announced that it has achieved significant breakthroughs on a number of fronts in its nuclear enrichment program.

Such nuclear enrichment not only is needed to fuel Iran’s nuclear reactors but can be used for medical research and, if enriched to levels above 90 percent, can be used for nuclear weapons.

Israel assesses that Iran has enough low-grade-enriched uranium to make four nuclear weapons if the Islamic republic achieves technical breakthroughs in uranium enrichment beyond the 90-percent level.

Placement of the covert naval vessels in the northern Arabian Sea allows Israel to use them as a standoff C4ISR, or Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance platform.

This would give the Israelis the capability of not only intelligence-gathering on Iranian communications of its missile and air defense activities but also to coordinate attacks employing jet fighters, missiles and missile-carrying submarines in the event Israeli forces get the order to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Such an attack also would require knocking out Iran’s ground-to-air missile facilities along its coast and near intended targets.

In addition, the U.S. intelligence source said Israel continues to handle missile propellant for its nuclear-capable Jericho II missiles, and now there are indications of “new and different” large-scale coordinated joint military force exercises.

Propellant preparation for the Jericho II missiles coincides with recent comments by Israeli officials who say that any attack on Iran would include the intermediate Jericho II missiles equipped with high explosives.